Updated February 28, 2025 at 14:38 PM ET
The year 1960 is referred to as "The Year of Africa" – when 16 newly independent African countries took their seat at the United Nations. It was the culmination of a political earthquake as leaders from Ghana's founder Kwame Nkrumah to Congo's first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba became global icons of postcolonial freedom. On the other side of the Atlantic, an extraordinary generation of Black musicians were dropping mics of their own. On airwaves and in concert halls, this was the American age of John Coltrane and Nina Simone. In their music and their Civil Rights activism, they heard an echo in Africa's songs of freedom.
Jazz, politics and continents collide in the Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. The film charts both the hopes and the tragedies of Africa's freedom movements in the shadow of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union and the United States jockeyed for influence in the "new world." For the U.S. State Department, cultural diplomacy took center stage as musicians like Simone and Louis Armstrong were dispatched to stages from Accra to Kinshasa. Less a conventional documentary and more a hypnotic, cinematic essay, the film blends archival footage, jazz, and interviews into a two-and-a-half-hour exploration of Cold War geopolitics and the politics of art.
Directed by Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, Soundtrack to a Coup d'État transforms political history into a kinetic, urgent concert hall of ideas. For Grimonprez, the fusion of music and politics was inescapable. "While researching that pivotal moment – when the wave of independence swept across Africa – I found that music was inherently part of that history," he explains. "I couldn't help but make music a protagonist in the film."
"What we learn from the film," says critic B. Ruby Rich, "is that the U.S., in its attempt to win over the world from Communism, was sending Black musicians abroad to promote its side of the Cold War conflict." Footage of their live performances, interviews, and travels across the Atlantic gives the film an air of glamorous, jet-age swagger. The goal was to share the extraordinary music, but also to win hearts and minds.
While these artists performed in newly independent African nations, often escaping Jim Crow racism at home to be embraced as global stars, the political machinations unfolding behind the scenes were far less harmonious. As the film shows, behind the scenes, Western plots and interventions culminated with the overthrow and murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo – an act for which the Belgian government has since taken responsibility and apologized.
As Grimonprez explains, within months of coming to power, Patrice Lumumba was overthrown, imprisoned and murdered. The role of the CIA and Belgium in opposing Lumumba's ascent and Soviet influence is documented in chilling detail on screen – with archival interviews, texts, and a relentless jazz score that underscores the contradictions of the era. The result sometimes risked becoming "an academic PDF disguised as a playlist," he says.
As critic B. Ruby Rich explains, Grimonprez's style seeks to stitch together materials from the past with contemporary attention spans. "He fits into the tradition known as the video essay or what used to be called the essay film — but borrowing from theater and Broadway, you could call it a jukebox documentary, because it is just propelled by music."
Grimonprez even drew visual inspiration from iconic jazz label Blue Note's album covers, casting political leaders such as Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and Malcolm X as band leaders in their own right. These real-life "characters" are often introduced with music interludes and rapid-fire graphics on-screen. The film's approach is anachronistic and consistently engaging.
In the film, "You have the freedom, idealism, and truth-telling of jazz," says Columbia University professor Hisham Aidi, "juxtaposed against the cynicism and double talk of realpolitik." The two and a hour film is a restless layering of real-world history and music.
And yet, despite both its complexity and material density, the film has resonated widely. "I thought its structure might be too challenging," Grimonprez says, "but it seems to have really crossed over to a big audience. I never expected an Oscar nomination, but people really relate to this story."
For critic B. Ruby Rich, the film's power lies in its ability to remix the past, resurrecting the archive not just to document history but to explain the present. "It's a time of so much change and mutation and hope that frankly it feels like science fiction and it doesn't feel like history. That's what's so great because it gives you a transcendent feeling of a whole world being thrown into a scrambler machine."
For Ghanaian music writer Kobby Ankomah Graham, replaying that complicated history in the African present became an unsettling and inspiring experience. He says seeing African leaders and artists rise to global stages despite the challenges they faced feels like a gift. "This is me looking at people who really tried – and the film shows that the trying was at an international level."
"When I watched this, I actually cried and felt not a little angry," he says. "But it was the type of anger that spurs one to action."
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